


Coming to Terms

by residualaffection



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Banter, Established Relationship, F/M, Foreplay, Knife fighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-22
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-04-16 13:25:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4626882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/residualaffection/pseuds/residualaffection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sif & Loki wager on a sparring match.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming to Terms

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a million years ago and just found it while looking for something else. It's not exactly finished, but it's close enough and as close as it's going to get, so I figured I might as well post it.

 

Sif scoffed, twirling the blade in her palm. “Those are no kind of stakes, Odinson. I know _I_ am certain of my victory but I had not realized you were as well!”

“To the contrary, Lady, I thought it ungentlemanly to suggest any more, knowing as I do that you shall be the one bearing the burden in the end. But as you wish. What sort of wager would be more to your liking? Know I shall judge whether you bluff on your choice.”

“I cannot care,” she shrugged, busy scuffing the leather wrapped around her palm, “Choose what you please, it shall be no concern of mine but to collect.”

Loki grinned, but the sight of all those perfectly sharp teeth did nothing to shake Sif’s confidence. “When you think on this moment later, I hope you recall that it was entirely your own idea.”

Sif’s response was a snort. “Let’s hear it, then, and be on with it.” She shook out her arms, head rolling from one shoulder to the other, loosening muscles more inclined to tense in anticipation of the bout to come. “You will gain no advantage by stalling.”

“I had not thought to, and let me remind you it was you who rejected my initial suggestion but very well!” He lifted a hand with a laugh as Sif looked about to interrupt in further show of impatience, “Very well. Here it is, my lady: if you win you will have me entirely at your service for one day, to mistreat as cruelly as ever you please.”

Loki’s expression of aggrieved innocence drew a laugh from Sif and she rolled her eyes. “I would never. And if I did you would enjoy it in any case. Very well, and what do I wager? For the sake of formality, I would know.” His smile curled so warmly at the idea that Sif’s dark brows lifted. “If I had any doubt of my superior skill in this I might wonder what the Trickster is cooking up in that head of his. You look as if you have something very particular in mind.”

“Oh, I do. When I beat you, my lady, I will have you kneel for me.”

“That _would_ make a change, wouldn’t it? A pretty dream, for you.”

“Then you agree? If I win, I shall have you on your knees before me, for my pleasure.”

“Yes, yes. Should you by some miracle triumph, I will do just that.”

The bargain struck, Loki grinned, and Sif laughed again, shaking her head as she turned away, circling back to her starting position. Behind her Loki threw off his cloak with a flourish and produced his knives from the air, rolling them across his knuckles and back before assuming his usual opening posture. She came around to face him and found her own. They let a moment pass in silence and stillness.

He sprang first as she sought to circle, and blades flashed and scraped on armor as she parried. They moved almost too quickly to be followed, a torrent of strikes and blocks, dodged and returned. She slipped a cut between the panels on his chest and he striped her arm, she dropped him to one knee with a kick and he clipped her across the jaw. That they both bled slowed them not at all, Sif grinning despite the swelling of her lip, Loki’s gaze fixed in concentration. Twice she nearly had him, a blade bound for his neck before he managed to wriggle away at the last second. She laughed and redoubled her efforts, and they battled on with a vicious joy, dealing out brutal blows that would have felled lesser beings. 

“You have improved since last we fought,” Sif remarked as she barely side-stepped a jab at her ribs. She sounded impressed but unconcerned, pleased by the challenge even as she skidded back across the floor.

“As have you, of course,” Loki replied, swinging a wide, long-armed cut towards her retreating form, stalking after only to be repelled by a foot to the gut that made him grunt. It only bought her a moment and then he was on her again, driving her back toward the wall with a flurry of viper-quick hits that knocked her knife from her hand. “Though I think your arrogance has outstripped your skill this once, my lady.” He tripped her back into the wall and Sif’s chin lifted, stretching beneath the blade he held to her throat. Loki chuckled, and leaned in close, breath warm on her ear. “I am so looking forward to seeing you kneel for me, Sif.” His voice was soft, dark with amusement and desire and she felt it like fingers tracing down her spine. “My proud lady of war, so cocky today.” His voice dropped even lower, and lips brushed the shell of her ear, “I cannot wait to have your mouth and that wicked tongue of yours. It has been too long. Come, yield to me. You know you must.”

She grinned and gave her head a little shake he felt as the brush of her hair against his cheek. “Make me.”

“If you had not noticed, I have. I have you quite at my mercy.” Loki chuckled, a little bemused, and wiggled the blade so the edge just barely nicked her skin, the cut so shallow it merely stung and barely bled a drop before it closed.

“Ah, a misunderstanding,” Sif remarked, brow furrowing in feigned confusion, “For I had only stopped here to listen. It seemed the polite thing, at first, and then, well. You know what your voice does to me, Loki. I do so love it when you whisper in my ear.” Her lips pressed together in a smile that held in most of a pleased noise and an empty hand slipped between them to palm his crotch. Finding him hard, she grinned. “And so do you, I see.”

Loki laughed again, a brief and husky sound. “All for you, my lady, just as soon as you concede my victory.” His hips pushed into her hand but his weapon did not waver beneath her chin.

Sif tilted her head as if considering the idea, heedless still of the steel at her throat, her thumb stroking up and down his length in an absent fashion. She made a thoughtful sound, and then shook her head again, lips pursing into a smile that might have been apologetic if her gaze weren’t so bright with humor. “I am afraid I cannot.”

He would have rolled his eyes, but instead they widened in surprise and pain as she gave him a more-than-friendly squeeze and at the same moment produced a knife liberated from a sheath hidden along his own spine and stuck it in the side of his thigh. He recovered quickly, but not enough to stop her using his split-second of shock and pain to execute a nimble duck and slide out of his grasp. She wiped her pilfered blade clean on the edge of her tunic as she darted back towards the center of their makeshift sparring ground, laugh ringing. 

“I cannot believe you fell for that!” she crowed, the dark tail of her hair whipping side to side as she shook her head, “You would think you were still some lovesick youth in thrall to the contents of his trousers. Are you so infrequently satisfied?”

Loki bit back a snarling flare of anger and made an unnecessary re-survey of the room to assure himself they were alone, that none had seen that embarrassing little episode but Sif. He put on a smirk as he turned to face her. “Alas, my lover is a selfish wench.”

He found his turn toward a darker mood forestalled when she laughed again, lips curling into a grin. “What a shame for you. She must be quite a lady that you remain with her despite her neglect.”

“Oh, she is,” he replied and Sif’s brows rose in surprise as his words seemed for a moment to aim toward a compliment. “Such a violent, brutal woman I fear what terrors she might wreak upon the land if she were left un-tended-to.” This earned another laugh from her and she tossed his knife end over end in the air, catching it as she prowled nearer. “So I do what I must.” Loki spread his hands in a courtly shrug, “For the good of the realms, you see.”

Sif stalked ever closer and finally struck. “Surely,” she said, even as she darted in close, “There are any number of others who could sate her appetites.” Loki rebuffed her attack but found himself off-balance and fell back a step to recover before launching his counter. 

“Not a one.” He struck and she parried, and they danced their way around the floor, neither able to land a blow or grab a hold, too canny and too familiar. “She will have none but me.”

“Is that so?” 

The look Loki cut her way was sharper than the knife in his hand and it wasn’t exertion that turned his voice to a growl. “Yes.” He lunged, and she dodged aside, the blade slicing clean through her sleeve but missing flesh.

“I cannot imagine why.” 

Sif ducked past his guard and Loki avoided a ‘killing’ blow only by tumbling unexpectedly to ground and dragging her with him. She was adjusting almost before her back hit the stone, repositioning to gain a grappling hold. She slipped his grasp but was quickly caught again and they traded grips and blows, fists jammed into kidneys, elbows to the gut, legs tangled to hold back knees. More than once Sif felt her focus slip as Loki’s hand pulled at her thigh or his chest pushed against hers. Even in near-constant motion as they were there was no hiding his arousal but Loki seemed to have mastered his concentration, unlikely to repeat his earlier mistake. Sif couldn’t manage to throw him fully over before he’d gained a new hold and scrambling free meant arching back into him. If her squirming drove him a little mad, too, well. 

She bit her own lip hard and jabbed knuckles between his ribs, but again escape was fleeting. When he lunged after her she rolled clear but didn’t expect the angle he took next and was suddenly pinned fast, one arm locked, Loki’s elbow closed around her throat. She searched for a weak point, pushing off the floor to try to flip them, only to have his forearm pressed even more firmly to her throat and his legs closing around her hips, holding her down. The blood began to rush in her ears. She laughed and fought, testing every point of contact, searching for leverage, twisting this way and that to no avail. Before her eyes bright spots bloomed, and she shut her eyes, going abruptly limp in Loki’s arms.

Where she’d hoped for concern, she got only a chuckle. “Do you think me foolish enough to fall for two poor tricks in one bout, Sif? I will let go when you yield and not before.” 

“And if I do not?”

“Then I will wait for your unconsciousness to do it for you.”

“Taking your sparring so seriously today.” Her voice was strained, and growing thin.

“I value my prize.”

Sif rolled her eyes even as lids dropped closed.

“Fenrir’s gaping maw, Sif,” Loki grumbled, “Does the prospect repel you so much?” and she laughed, or at least opened her mouth in a smile that would have been a laugh if there’d been any breath in her lungs. A cruel twist of his wrist availed her not at all, nor did a heel dug at his shin.

Finally she lifted a hand and patted his forearm, and then again. “Yield,” she mouthed, “I yield.” Loki leaned around to see it, and finally released his hold, unfolding onto his back and stretching arms above his head. Sif flopped onto her side, regaining her breath and shaking her head. This time Loki rolled his eyes.

“You should know better than to underestimate your opponents. Your arrogance does you no favors.” His mouth drew into a wicked grin as he got smoothly to his feet, “Though in this case it has certainly worked in mine.”

Sif rose and headed to the side to join him in crushing a healing stone and seeing to the worst of her injuries, pulling aside sliced leather and linen to rub dust into gashes and one particularly dark bruise already rising along her ribs. She watched the worst of it fade and then dropped her shirt, turning to find Loki just turning his gaze away. He bared the pale expense of his own torso to find a gouge she’d made in his side, and Sif stared without shame, gaze sliding over the flat plane of his abdomen, lean muscle and pale skin, a faint trail of dark hair down his belly that she followed with her eyes. Loki caught her looking and smirked. “Come, then,” he said, as the wound sealed shut, “I believe you owe me a prize, lady.”

“So I do,” Sif said, brushing her hands clean of dust and drying blood. “You are eager to claim it, I see.” They both smirked. “Remind me of the terms?” She asked, unbuckling the few light pieces of armor she wore and tossing them into a pile.

Loki stepped back, letting his tunic fall and remain untucked. His stance was wide, as always, and he set hands at his hips. “I want you to kneel,” he said. He flicked a wrist in gesture towards down his body. “I believe you can find your own way from there.”

Sif snorted. She strode across the space between them, stopping near enough that they nearly touched before she sank gracefully to her knees, looking up at him all the while. When she had settled back on her haunches she lifted a brow. “Is this what you had in mind?”

Loki was looking down with a familiar heat in his eyes, and a curl of his lip that made his expression at once both haughty and amused. “A part. I cannot say I do not enjoy the view, rare as it is. You look well there, Sif. Not so well as you will once occupied, I dare say.”

“You dare indeed.” Sif looked up with an answering smirk, and when she reached for him it wasn’t for his belt. With whip-quick hands she yanked his legs from beneath him and Loki landed heavily on his back, breath pushed out of him in a grunt of impact and surprise. He picked his head up to find Sif sliding nearer, biting her lip to hold in a grin as she flipped aside the top layer of his surcoat, searching out the buckles and ties beneath with familiar ease. 

“We had terms, Sif,” he protested, beginning to sit up. She pushed him back, looming over with a hand on his chest as she tugged his trousers open. 

“And here I am on my knees, Loki,” she replied, grin no less wicked as it ticked wider. She drew his underclothes down but didn’t quite touch, just ghosting a fingertip over him through the cloth as she pulled it back. “It’s hardly my fault you weren’t more specific about your own position.” She clicked her tongue as she drew back to settle between his shins and lean down, “I do hope you’re more careful when negotiating affairs of state.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering whether this was inspired by the story of Rollo the viking being asked to kiss the king's foot in exchange for Normandy, the answer is yes it was, and also high five for being a total nerd.


End file.
